An attempt to “get” a world that doesn’t get it - John Woodhouse 

Elective at the Priscilla & Aquila annual conference, 3 February 2020.
There was a time when many Christians felt intellectually embarrassed about their faith. There was an idea around that science could in principle explain everything. God was an unnecessary hypothesis. The Enlightenment was (it was widely thought) the beginning of the end of all religion. Reason had replaced faith. Today there is a different kind of embarrassment felt by many believers. They feel morally embarrassed about their faith. They sense the way in which many of the Bible’s teachings are honestly seen by our contemporaries as unjust, oppressive, exclusive, bigoted, hateful and/or intolerant. In this seminar we will attempt a preliminary description and evaluation of the key ideas that, once embraced, make it impossible for our world to see the goodness of God and his ways.